On Syria
When God opens a door, you should walk through it
Over the last two weeks, Syria has been overrun by the Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) jihadists. HTS came out of their refugium in Idlib Province on the border with Turkey in the Northwest in what was probably was originally meant to be a local offensive. As the Syrian army collapsed, HTS were joined by pretty much every other Sunni jihad organization in the country except for the Islamic State, which issued a very sniffy condemnation. The leader of HTS, Abu Muhammad Al Julani, immediately started speaking like an Atlantic Council fellow:
The Syrian regime forces showed themselves as incompetent and unmotivated as they had been in 2011. The Hezbollah and Iranian Quds Force troops who had been protecting the regime had been busy getting wrecked over the border in Lebanon, and were not able to save it. Really, they hadn’t been very useful in the previous chapters of the Syrian Civil War, which is why the Russians had to get involved in 2015. Unfortunately for Al Assad, the Wagner Group infantrymen who saved his state back then are now in the Ukraine, busy being dead. Assad fled and the Russians are bailing out of their coastal bases.
Israel did the smart thing and took the opportunity to blow up as much of the Syrian military’s abandoned assets as it could, as well as launching a small invasion in the South. Hamas congratulated the jihadists for wrecking its Iranian patrons’ proxy state. Russia moved in the direction of recognizing the new regime.
Why is this happening? The normal Western answer would be something like “it all started after World War 1 with Sykes-Picot, when the Allies divided the Ottoman Empire’s Middle Eastern assets. Unfortunately, the borders of the states formed as a result, Syria and Iraq, did not reflect the complicated ethnoreligious mosaic blahblahblah.” In reality, no conceivable borders drawn on a two dimensional map could fix the main problem of the region: the fact that it’s full of sadistic, violent retards with dents in their foreheads, mushy frontal lobes and a complete lack of receptiveness to techniques of governance beyond those of the Assyrian Empire. Therefore, the only periods of peace and quiet for the Arabs of Mesopotamia and the Levant are those when they are too busy being brutally oppressed by a strong tyrannical regime to murder each other. Even a powerful external enemy on their doorstep won’t make them stop their infighting for longer than absolutely necessary.
To see the future of the current jihadist coalition, you can take a look at its past-a patchwork of psychopathic war bands endlessly splitting, joining, fighting, making alliances and breaking them. Syria’s insurgency has a plot whose particulars are very difficult to follow, due to the psychotic and stupid nature of its participating factions. It’s difficult to believe that they will now form a constitutional republic and settle their political and doctrinal differences through reasoned parliamentary debate. The future of Syria is either more brutal civil war or a brutal tyranny.
The various backers of the belligerent parties are also in murky positions. Turkey’s ambitions for Mediterranean dominance might be advanced by the jihadists’ victory, as two of its major challengers in the Levant (Iran and Russia) just lost their main proxy. On the other hand, having a civil war on its borders poses an inherent threat to Turkey’s regime, and previous attempts at direct intervention proved costly. Russia has lost the lynchpin to the proxy war it’s fighting in Africa. The US is maneuvering for a position of patronage over the new regime, as evidenced by fawning coverage in the official Western media, which is ignoring the footage of HTS prisoner massacres and settling of accounts already coming out on OSINT Telegram channels.
In the big picture, the US would love to use a new proxy state in Syria for a gas pipeline from the Persian Gulf to Europe, in order to break Russia’s energy leverage over the European economy. This is the broad context of the war in the Ukraine as well, and the focus of American global efforts vis-a-vis Russia since the early 2000s, as discussed by Mike Benz on his must-watch interview with Joe Rogan. Unfortunately, it’s a literal pipe dream. A pipeline passing through thousands of kilometers of remote territory with dozens of militias will have a Nord Stream-style attack every week. To prevent this from happening, the new HTS regime would have to neutralize the influence of Russia and Iran in the area and crush the Islamic State completely.
For Israel, the short term results of the fall of Assad’s regime are extremely positive. Iran’s logistical support to Hezbollah ran through Syria. That’s over for now, which means either temporary quiet on the Northern border or an opportunity to secure our position in the North for the next fifty years (more on that later.) As a result of the IDF’s initiative, the new Syrian state will be short on advanced weapons systems. Though HTS is already announcing its intention to liberate Palestine and Al Aqsa, it must first consolidate power and build a Syrian military with cohesion and offensive capacities; driving across the Golan in Hi Lux pickup trucks won’t work. A buffer zone held by the IDF and Druze militia proxy forces acting as a tripwire and intelligence substrate should prevent October 7th-style unexpected ghazawat for the time being.
In the long term, the HTS regime could be extremely dangerous to Israel. It represents a potential Sunni militant state which could call upon the loyalties of the millions of Sunni Arabs living from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Hundreds or thousands of them joined the Islamic State in its heyday, whether traveling to its domain or swearing fealty while continuing to live here.
This was despite the marginalized nature of the Islamic State, the strong presence of incumbent terrorist groups (Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad,) and multinational efforts to combat it which eventually proved successful. An inclusive HTS coalition leveraging American and European support, operating in the power vacuum left by the collapse of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority which we’re watching in real time, could recruit hundreds of thousands of Arabs on both sides of the Green Line, who are very well equipped with small arms. Unlike Hamas, which was constrained to a small geographic base in Gaza and had to expend lots of energy in breaching the border and local fighting, these Arabs live minutes away from all major Israeli cities and strategic installations. Israeli Arab hostile drone penetration of Israeli Air Force bases is already endemic. For now, those drones are unarmed.
The Israeli government needs to take advantage of the chaotic situation and the indecisiveness of the lame duck American administration to create facts on the ground to prevent a future catastrophe and ensure decades of stability. Ruling over masses of Muslims is inherently a powder keg situation, even for a Muslim regime; for a Jewish one, it is an intolerable risk. Ceding land and using border fortifications, or relying on intelligence monitoring and decapitation strikes are stopgap measures which makes the inevitable razzia more bloody when it comes. Ask Assad how containment worked out for him.
The only way forward is to seize land and encourage its Muslim inhabitants to leave before annexing it. In Syria, a security buffer consisting of the Hauran region should be established and have Jewish settlements built as soon as possible, with the residents organized and equipped to provide their own security. In Lebanon, the areas lying between the Israeli border and the Druze belt South of Beirut should be taken, annexed and settled, with their Shi’a inhabitants encouraged to move to safer districts around Beirut and the Northeast, precisely as they encouraged the Jews of Northern Israel to leave over the last year. The Druze and Christians in Syria and Lebanon should be offered protection, weapons and combat support, as well as access to Israeli markets and institutions as appropriate.
Once a security belt across South Syria and Lebanon has been established, and strategic depth secured, we can deal with the new Syrian regime for as long as it lasts. Perhaps a population transfer in exchange for certain concessions with regard to recognition and a peace deal can be negotiated. In the event that the regime forms a relatively stable tyranny, Israeli technological and security expertise could be a valuable incentive in coming to an arrangement. If, as is more likely, Syria descends into yet another round of civil war, we will be in a position of relative strength when dealing with the various factions.
God has given us a unique opportunity to achieve security. I hope we don’t squander it.
I’ve already register a new non profit to end the oppressive and illegal Israeli occupation of Syria
Having listened now to about six hours of interview with and about al-Jolani conducted between 2015 to the present, my impressions are as follows:
* He is extremely charismatic, highly intelligent, and interested in long-term strategic hegemony
* He is sincere about shifting his focus from al-Qaeda-style global gihad to regional governance, institution-building
* Liberation of al-Aqsa and the Palestinian cause in general are of a lower order of priority
My assessment is that HTS under al-Jolani is engaging in a long-term hybrid military-political-comms strategy in which they rebuild and consolidate power over the course of 7-10 years before engaging in further offensive actions against the Zionist occupation. Meanwhile, they will likely engage in a charm campaign to win over the hearts and minds of southern Syrian minorities while collecting intelligence. When the time is right, and the Zionists are sufficiently lulled into complacency as is their nature, the campaign will begin.
We have plenty of time to prepare for this eventuality, so rest assured that our political and military leadership will squander the opportunity by conducting political witch-hunts and engaging in kangaroo trials until nobody is left to fight when the time comes. Buckle your seatbelt!